


paper cranes

by orphan_account



Series: 30 weeks of writing prompts [21]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Origami, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22383946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: dan and phil decide that it’s a good idea to try making origami for a video and to nobody’s surprise, things go wrong (week 21 of my 30 weeks of writing prompts challenge: origami)
Relationships: Dan Howell & Phil Lester, Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: 30 weeks of writing prompts [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495385
Kudos: 3





	paper cranes

To say that Phil has been on YouTube for a long time is an extreme understatement. He has been a monumental figure on the video platform during the very early ages of its existence and he has been around to see the evolution of popular videos. And since he’s been around for a while, he’s also seen popular videos redefined within the past decade.

This means that as a creator whose career relied on maintaining a sense of humor that appealed to a wide audience to ensure popularity, Phil often has to change the style and topics of his videos to accommodate what’s currently popular with the YouTube audience. Since he and Dan haven’t made a casual video together in a long time, he decides to make a video with him. The topic, however, was a little harder to decide because he had done just about everything with Dan.

Then, one night, Phil is researching some interesting animals when he stumbles upon an article about how to make origami animals, which he clicked on, of course. As he reads through the article, Phil gets more and more convinced that he should most definitely attempt to make an origami animal, even though he has the craftsman skills of a ten-year-old. He then decides to drag Dan into this idea and despite the fact that it’s 1 am in the dead of the night, Phil tip-toes over to Dan’s room and knocks on his door to make Dan aware of his presence. 

Dan’s door is already partially open so Phil pushes it open a little more to see Dan sitting on his bed, his eyes on the glowing screen of his laptop while there’s a giant blanket wrapped around him like a burrito. “Dan, would you be interested in doing a video with me where we attempt to make origami animals?”

“Sounds terrible. Let’s do it,” Dan grins, momentarily taking his eyes off the screen to give Phil an approving look before he continues to browse whatever he was looking at before. 

Phil kisses the top of Dan’s head and murmurs, “Go to sleep soon. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Dan replies, kissing Phil on the cheek as well and Phil returns back to his bedroom with a small smile on his face. He’s way too enamored with his boyfriend but he’s perfectly fine with that. 

Phil orders origami paper from Amazon and finally goes to sleep. After a few days, the paper arrives and Dan also happens to have a free day then so Phil decides to film the video so he can upload as quickly as possible. He sets up the camera, places the origami paper on the table, and prints out the instructions before he calls Dan over to film the video.

Once the camera starts rolling, Dan and Phil easily fall into their casual banter and behavior that the fans almost never saw anymore. As Phil introduces the video, Dan inspects the package and once Phil is finished talking, Dan remarks, “The instructions on how to use this paper are in Japenese.”

“It’s fine. We can figure it out,” Phil giggles and Dan carefully tears open the plastic packaging, wincing at the awful sound of plastic ripping. There are a variety of colors in the pack of origami papers and Dan chooses the dark, black colored paper (because it’s “black like my soul,'' according to Dan) while Phil chooses the sky blue paper. 

Before they get started, Phil shows the camera the instructions to make it clear that they had some sort of sense of what they wanted the end product to look like. Knowing Dan and Phil, the end product is most definitely not going to look like what it’s supposed to. That’s what the case always was with cooking videos and since origami is equally as complicated, or maybe even more so than, cooking, they both knew that something is bound to go wrong during the process.

“Okay, we should start with the paper crane. It looks like the easiest. First, you just have to fold it in half, which should just be easy,” Dan holds up his paper to show him folding it perfectly in half at the corners. Phil mimics his actions and everything seems to be going rather smoothly. At least, that’s the case up until step five.

“How am I supposed to fold this over? Why is it not working? It’s getting wrinkly! Dan, help!” Phil cries in alarm as he tries folding and unfolding the paper to fix the problem. However, that seems to exacerbate the issue and Phil’s paper ends up too wrinkly to be fixed. 

Meanwhile, Dan is working on fixing his own mistakes. His tongue pokes out a little as he focuses intensely on folding and creasing correctly. After a few minutes, he finally finishes and holds up his black paper crane proudly, smiling as Phil’s jaw drops in awe.

“How were you able to do that?” 

“Just took a lot of figuring out and following the instructions correctly. Something you can’t do properly, apparently,” Dan replies sarcastically and Phil sticks his tongue out at his boyfriend teasingly.

“I am following the instructions! It’s just not working for me,” Phil pouts and Dan scoots closer to Phil, grabbing a new paper for Phil to work on. He places his hands on Phil’s and begins guiding his boyfriend’s hands to fold and crease the paper the way it’s supposed to be increased. Phil stays quiet while Dan explains what he's doing in a soft, gentle voice. 

With the help of Dan, Phil is able to finally succeed in folding an origami crane. He proudly holds up his blue crane to the camera right next to Dan’s and he asks the audience to vote in the comments on which one is better, which causes Dan to roll his eyes and quip that technically, he made both of them. 

Next, Dan and Phil decide to try to make a penguin, which is slightly more difficult. But thanks to their practice with the crane, it takes Dan and Phil less time to successfully fold the penguin but when Phil finishes, he shows off his finished creation, proudly announcing that he was able to complete without the help of Dan. Dan is clearly proud of his boyfriend and shows this through complimenting Phil’s penguin. Dan’s penguin also looks wonderful as well and they are both content with the products of their work overall.

He ends the video with his normal outro, except that when he says goodbye, Dan says it along with him. Once the cameras are off, Phil turns towards Dan and kisses him on the lips because he’s truly lucky to have found somebody who’s willing to tolerate making origami with him. And Dan doesn’t have any complaints because he feels equally as lucky to have found somebody whose ideas are as creative as his.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr[@luckysam78](https://luckysam78.tumblr.com/)! my bfu sideblog is [@tinsley-goldsworth](https://tinsley-goldsworth.tumblr.com/)! comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!


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